Specifications

CD, DVD, BLU-RAY & PlayStation 3 Secrets
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Since these earlier BT.709 HDTV displays would not normally handle 0-15 and 236-255 values anyways, the PS3 scales or cuts
out those values in the content before passing them to the HDTV. This is expecially important for compatibility with PS3 Games
and XMB, as the RSX sRGB color space had 0-255 primary color values, which would cause problems in these displays.
Super White option when using HDMI connection
The Super White On setting forces the PS3 to not scale or clip the video (DVD, Blu-ray, or AVCHD) primary color values to 16-
235, but to pass 0-255 on to the display, when the PS3 is using YCbCr over HDMI. Normally, video content are supposed to
contain only 16-235 for their primary color values.
However, in certain cases the content will contain Super White signals (values 236-255) to highlight special areas of the display
so they are super bright (like in menus). In certain cases values 0-15 (sometimes called Blacker than Black) will also exist on
the DVD (for blackness calibration).
These signals will normally not be passed to the display unless you turn on Super White on the PS3, and your HDTV can handle
0-255 YCbCr content (normally HDMI 1.3 compliant displays). Again, because the PS3 is using a digital connection via HDMI,
analog problems associated with these out of bound values on old TV do not exist, so turning this option on is possible for
HDTVs that support 0-255 YCbCr primary color values.
When using HDMI Full RGB to play back video content (which will convert YCbCr content from disc or AVCHD to Full RGB), the
Super White option has no effect (because this is not a YCbCr connection), but note that the 0-15 Blacker than Black (BTB) and
236-255 Super White (SW) content from the disc or AVCHD are ignored regardless.
This may be a bug in firmware because what this means is that the only way to get BTB or SW content when playing back
video from disc or AVCHD is to use YCbCr with Super White on. HDMI RGB connection with RGB Full ignores BTB and SW video
content during conversion, and remaps 16-235 from the YCbCr video to Full RGB 0-255.
The following is a summary of the RGB Full/Limited and Super White options on the PS3.
HDMI Type Connection Type 0-15 16-235 236-255 PS3 Application
RGB RGB Full RGB (0-255) PS3 Games, XMB
RGB RGB Limited RGB (0-255) remapped to RGB (16-235) PS3 Games, XMB
RGB RGB Full YCbCr (16-235) remapped to RGB (0-255) Blu-ray, DVD, AVCHD
RGB RGB Limited YCbCr (16-235) to RGB (16-235) Blu-ray, DVD, AVCHD
YCbCr Super White On BTB (0-15) YCbCr (16-235) SW (236-255) Blu-ray, DVD, AVCHD
YCbCr Super White Off YCbCr (16-235) Blu-ray, DVD, AVCHD
Assuming you use a HDMI 1.3 connection, and the HDTV supports HDMI 1.3 with Full RGB, the following optimum settings
should be made. If you are using the PS3 for games or XMB, you should use RGB Full. If you are playing back video, you have
the option of using YCbCr or RGB, but you should choose YCbCr with Super White On.
Many old equipment like AV receivers and HDTV may not support the newer HDMI 1.3 protocol that allows Full RGB, and they
may miss up your calibration. Normally when playing back DVD on a PC application window, the darkest black background of
the video should be a dark grey tint because PC's sRGB allows darker 0-15 primary values.
If you try to calibrate the monitor so that the DVD video's darkest black is the blackest black, you won't see many darker colors
in PC programs. And this is related to the problem with old HDTVs and especially old SDTVs. Old CRT TV technology had the
darkest black the same color as the beam hitting the phosphor at the lowest value (which happens to be a dark grey color).
HDTV emulated this color with the BT.709 color space, but many HDTV manufacturers set the blackest black to even darker
values so the videos look nicer.
This is why on many older HDTVs, PS3 games on PS3 RGB Limited setting looks better because those older HDTVs were
calibrated with darker blacks to make DVDs look better. Forcing the PS3 games to have a reduced color gamut of 16-235 will
match the color of these older HDTV displays.
In these older HDTVs, setting PS3 Full RGB for games will end up with many shades of dark colors indistinguishable (similar to
if you tried to run a PC application on a PC monitor adjusted for the darkest black of a DVD movie). So you should not calibrate
your HDTVs darkness for video (and miss out on 0-15 and 236-255), but calibrate your HDTVs darkness for PS3 games and
XMB (and get full 0-255).
Perhaps in the future when there is an option for passing BTB and SW video data when in RGB Full mode, you won't need to
use YCrCb output anymore and videos, games, and XMB can coexist in the same sRGB color space without color remapping.
x.v.Color
Because HDMI Full RGB (and thus sRGB) had more bits left over for defining the color space (the inclusion of 0-15 and 235-255
primary color values), sRGB actually had a wider color range than BT.601 (SDTV) and BT.709 (HDTV).
x.v.Color (or xvYCC) was created to allow YCbCr to catch up with Full RGB (sRGB) and use the data values from 0-15 and 236-
255 to expand the color gamut and color space for video content when using the digital HDMI.
In order to utilize this larger color space, the storage medium (AVCHD), processor (PS3) and display (HDTV) all must be able to
support x.v.Color. x.v.Color uses special mathematics defined in values 0-15 and 236-255 to expand the color space, not to
mention the primary color values are no longer compatible with sRGB, BT.601, nor BT.709, as they point to brighter and darker